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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 1
Reenactment of televised content by 2-year-olds:
Toddlers use language learned from television to solve a difficult imitation problem.
Rachel Barr and Nancy Miller
Rachel Barr,Department of Psychology,306A White-Gravanor Building,Georgetown University,Washington DC 20057e-mail: [email protected],Phone 202-687-8064Fax 202-687-6050.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected] -
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 2
Abstract
Parents commonly label objects on television and for some programs, verbal labels are
also provided directly via voice-over. The present study investigated whether toddlers
imitation performance from television would be facilitated if verbal labels were presented
on television via voice-over or if they were presented by parents who were co-viewing
with their toddlers. Sixty-one 2-year-olds were randomly assigned to one of 4
experimental groups (voice-over video, parent video, parent video no label, parent live)
or to a baseline control condition. Toddlers were tested with novel objects after a 24 hr
delay. Although, all experimental groups imitated significantly more target actions than
the baseline control group, imitation was facilitated by novel labels regardless of whether
those labels were provided by parents or by voice-over on television. These findings have
important implications for toddler learning from television.
(Word count 135 words)
Keywords: television, toddler, imitation, verbal labels, repetition
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 3
Toddlers live in a media rich environment. Beginning during the 1990s and
increasing at an exponential rate, programming such asBaby Einstein is being produced
specifically for infants and toddlers (Garrison & Christakis, 2005). Annual sales of these
infant-directed videos reached $100 million in 2004 (Garrison & Christakis, 2005) and
toddlers are regularly exposed to these programs. Recent nationwide surveys in the
United States report that between 74-90% of infants are exposed to television before age
2 and those exposed to television spend between 1-2 hours per day watching television
and videos/DVDs (Rideout & Hamel, 2006; Rideout, Vandewater, & Wartella, 2003;
Zimmerman, Christakis, & Meltzoff, 2007a, b). Such statistical data has not been
reported in other nations/regions to date.
High levels of exposure to television occur despite the fact that the American
Association of Pediatrics (AAP, 1999) has recommended no television exposure before
the age of 2 years. Consistent with the AAP recommendation, a small but growing body
of research has demonstrated that infants and toddlers learn less information from
television than from live face-to-face interactions; a finding referred to as the video
deficit effect(Anderson & Pempek, 2005; Barr, in press). Deferred imitation is often
used to assess young childrens ability to learn from television. In the deferred imitation
task, an experimenter performs an action or actions and the infants ability to reproduce
that action or actions is assessed following a delay. Deferred imitation studies have
demonstrated that 12- to 30-month-olds consistently imitate significantly fewer actions
from television than from a live demonstration (Barr & Hayne, 1999; Hayne, Herbert, &
Simcock, 2003; Hudson & Sheffield, 1999; McCall, Parke, & Kavanaugh, 1977). For
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 4
example, Hayne and colleagues (2003) found that both 24- and 30-month-old toddlers in
the video demonstration condition imitated significantly fewer actions than infants in the
live demonstration condition when they were tested either immediately or after 24 hours.
The video deficit is also exhibited in object search tasks (Deocampo & Hudson, 2005;
Schmitt & Anderson, 2002; Suddendorf, 2003; Troseth, 2003; Troseth & DeLoache,
1998), emotion processing tasks with infants (Mumme & Fernald, 2003) and language
based tasks with infants, toddlers (Kuhl, Tsao, & Liu, 2003), and preschoolers (Sell, Ray,
& Lovelace, 1995). Similarly, researchers using event-related potentials (ERPs) have
demonstrated that 18-month-olds process 2D images more slowly than they process 3D
objects, recognizing a familiar 3D object very early in the attention process and
recognizing a 2D digital photo significantly later (Carver, Meltzoff, & Dawson, 2006).
The video deficit effect may be due to slower processing of information or increase in
cognitive load incurred due to the need to transfer information from 2D encoding to 3D
test conditions.
Under certain circumstances, however, the video deficit effect can be ameliorated.
In one deferred imitation study, for example, repetition of the target actions on television
enhanced imitation of two 3-step action sequences by 12- to 21-month-olds (Barr,
Muentener, Garcia, Chavez, & Fujimoto, 2007). Presumably repetition enhances
encoding and retrieval of the 2D attributes. It is important to note, that differences in
looking time could not account for these findings. The authors reported that % looking
time data did not vary as a function of age or experimental condition. Even though the
video demonstration was longer, overall % looking time was not significantly less than
the live presentation. These findings suggest that repetition allows for additional
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 5
processing which enhances comprehension of material (Barr & Hayne, 1999; Hudson &
Sheffield, 1999; Schmitt & Anderson, 2002; Suddendorf, 2003).
Other factors may also potentially ameliorate the video deficit effect. Television
producers include segments on prerecorded videotapes and DVDs that encourage parents
to co-view with their infants and toddlers (Garrison & Christakis, 2005). In a recent
study we found that parental-mediation influences infant interaction patterns and looking
time during infant-directed programming (Barr, Zack, Garcia, & Muentener, 2008). A
higher proportion of parent questions and labels/descriptions predicted higher infant
looking time and greater infant responsiveness to video content. This finding suggests
that parent labeling during co-viewing may facilitate learning from television.
Furthermore, Krcmar, Grela and Lin (2007) reported that 15- to 24-month-olds were able
to learn vocabulary from television if the adult spoke directly to the infant and there was
minimal additional stimulation. Infants had more difficulty, however, with voice-overs
until they were approximately 22 months old when they were able to also learn
vocabulary from clips accompanied by voice-over. Studies conducted with older
children, directly compared the effects of adult labeling and voice-over on childrens
comprehension of a prosocial cartoon (Watkins, Calvert, Huston-Stein & Wright, 1980).
They found that the 3- to 7-year-olds remembered significantly more information in the
adult labeling condition than in the voice-over condition. The present study will directly
compare the effect of parent labeling and voice-over labeling on toddlers imitation.
In the present experiment, we assessed the effect of providing novel labels on
deferred imitation from television using a procedure originally described by Herbert and
Hayne (2000). Herbert and Hayne (2000) examined whether toddlers could use an
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 6
adults language to help them to solve a difficult deferred imitation problem. Groups of
18- and 24-month-olds were randomly assigned to the experimental or baseline control
condition. Using a within subjects design, the experimenter demonstrated the target
actions and provided a novel label for one stimulus set (a rattle or a wooden animal) but
not the other. After a 24 hour delay, toddlers were presented with a novel version of each
set of stimuli and the label for one stimulus set. The baseline control condition was
simply provided with the stimuli at the time of the test. The verbal label enhanced
generalization performance by the 24-month-olds but not the 18-month-olds. When no
label was provided, performance did not exceed baseline at either age. The authors
concluded that verbal labels enhance cognitive flexibility by 24 months at both encoding
and retrieval.
In the past, researchers investigating imitation from television have always tested
toddlers with the same object that was used to demonstrate the target actions on television.
Studying generalization following televised demonstrations is important for both practical
and theoretical reasons. First, findings from deferred imitation studies using live models
have shown systematic age-related differences in generalization by 6- to 30-month-olds
(Barnat, Klein, & Meltzoff, 1996; Hanna & Meltzoff, 1993; Hayne, Boniface, & Barr, 2000;
Hayne, MacDonald, & Barr, 1997; Herbert & Hayne, 2000). For example, in the absence of
a verbal label, generalization to a novel rattle or wooden toy did not occur until 30-months
of age (Herbert & Hayne 2000). Therefore, examining generalization performance from
television is interesting because it further examines cognitive flexibility under challenging
representational circumstances (see also Simcock & Dooley, 2007 for a similar argument
regarding book reading). Can toddlers transfer information from television and can they
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 7
transfer information across objects? Second, from an ecological and practical point of view,
toddlers are not likely to encounter exactly the same object in their homes as they see on
television and an ability to generalize to novel yet functionally similar objects would
enhance the potential educational value of television for toddlers. Furthermore, given that
parents typically provide labels or voice-over including verbal labels during toddler-directed
programming then it would be useful to examine whether toddlers are using this language to
solve real world problems.
The present study examined whether toddlers can use language either learned
from a parent or a voice-over to solve a difficult imitation task from television. There
were two key questions for the present study. First, would repetition alone ameliorate a
video deficit effect when generalization was being tested? Second, if the video deficit
effect persisted, would verbal cues together with repetition ameliorate the video deficit?
Toddlers were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions (live parent label,
video parent label, video voice-over label, video no label). After a 24-hr delay, toddlers
were tested with 2 sets of novel stimuli. Performance of the experimental conditions was
compared to that of an age-matched baseline control condition.
Method
Participants. Sixty-one 24-months-olds (M= 24.47 months, SD = 8.63 days; 26
boys and 33 girls) and their caregivers (98% mothers, 2% fathers) were recruited through
commercial mailing lists and by word-of-mouth. Participants were African-American (n
= 2), Latino (n = 8), Caucasian (n = 43), and of mixed descent (n = 7). The majority of
toddlers were from middle- to upper-class, highly educated families. Their parents' mean
educational attainment was 17.3 years (SD = 1.6) based on 100% of the sample reporting,
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 8
and their mean rank of socioeconomic status (Nakao & Treas, 1992) was 79.4 (SD =
11.1) based on 90% of the sample reporting. Toddlers (n = 12/group) were randomly
assigned to five conditions; live 3x parent label, video 6x parent label, video 6x parent no
label, video 6x voice-over, and baseline conditions (see Table 1). Nineteen additional
toddlers were excluded from the final sample due to equipment failure or experimenter
error (n = 9), parental or sibling interference (n = 4), and refusal to play or crying (n = 6).
Apparatus: The stimuli used in the present experiment were identical to those
used by Herbert and Hayne (2000) and Barr et al. (2007). There were two types of stimuli
(rattle and animal) and two versions of each type. The two versions of each stimulus set
were constructed in such a way that the exact same target actions could be performed
with each version (see Table 2).
The stimuli for the greenrattle consisted of a green stick (12.5 cm long) attached
to a yellow plastic lid (9.5 cm in diameter) with velcro attached to the underside of the
lid, a blue octagonal bead (3 cm in diameter x 2.5 cm in height), and a clear plastic square
cup with velcro around the top (5.5 cm in diameter x 8 cm in height). The opening of the
plastic cup (3.5 cm in diameter) was covered with a 1 mm black rubber diaphragm, with
16 cuts radiating from the centre. The stimuli for the red rattle consisted of a red wooden
stick (12.5 cm long) with a plug on the end which fitted into a clear plastic ball with a
hole cut in the top (4 cm in diameter), and a clear plastic bead (2 cm in diameter) with a
blue ring (2.5 cm diameter).
The stimuli for the rabbittoy consisted of two plastic eyes (3 x 2 cm) attached to
a 9 x 6 cm piece of plywood with velcro on the back, a 12 cm orange wooden carrot with
green string attached to the top, a white circle of wood (the head, 15 cm in diameter)
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 9
mounted horizontally on a white rectangular wooden base (30 x 20 cm). A 3 cm (in
diameter) hole was drilled at the bottom of the head and a 5 x 15 cm piece of white velcro
was attached to the top of the head. Two white "ears" (20 x 5 cm) decorated with stripes
of pink felt were hidden behind the head. A 10 cm wooden stick attached to the top of
the right ear allowed the ears to be pulled up from behind the head in a circular motion to
a point above the head. The stimuli for the monkey toy consisted of two plastic eyes (2.5
cm in diameter) with eyelashes that were attached to a piece of brown plywood in the
shape of two diamonds joined at the center (11.5 cm in width, 6.5 cm in height), with
brown velcro on the back, a 20.5 cm yellow plastic banana, and a brown wooden head
and shoulders shape mounted horizontally on a brown rectangular wooden base (22 x 38
cm). A 4 cm hole was drilled at the bottom of the head and a 5 x 18 cm piece of brown
velcro was attached to the top of the head. Two brown ears (3.5 x 7 cm) decorated with a
piece of yellow felt were hidden behind the head. A 3 cm lever with a wooden button
(3.5 cm in diameter) on the top, attached to the right ear, allowed for the ears to be pulled
up from behind the head in a circular motion to the side of the head.
Professionally produced 60 s video segments, one for each stimulus, were made
for the study. The video used cuts to focus attention on the target actions. At the
beginning of each videotape, toddlers saw the head and torso of the male experimenter
but the stimuli were not visible. The experimenter began the video demonstration by
saying "Look at this." Next, toddlers saw a close-up of the experimenter's hands as he
modeled the target actions for one repetition (Barr & Hayne, 1999; McCall et al., 1977).
Next, they saw the head and torso of the male experimenter again. The demonstration
alternated between close-ups of the target actions and the head and torso of the male
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 10
experimenter. The experimenter on the video demonstrated the actions with one set of
stimuli six times and then demonstrated different actions with the other set of stimuli six
times. The actions were demonstrated in exactly the same manner as for toddlers in the
live 3x condition. Between the presentation of one set of stimuli and the other there was a
1sfade out to black. For the video 6x voice-overcondition a female voice-over was addedto the 4 video segments. The voice-over was inserted during the demonstration of the
target actions and was identical to the script used by parents in the parent labeling
conditions.
Procedure: During the initial visit, the purpose of the study and details of the
procedure were explained to the caregiver and informed consent was obtained. All
toddlers were tested in their homes at a time of day that the caregiver identified as an
alert/play period. At the beginning of each session, the experimenter interacted with the
toddler for approximately 5 minutes or until a smile was elicited. Parents also reported
language production via the MacArthur Communication Development Inventory (MCDI;
Fenson et al., 1994). Parents were also asked to estimate their typical daily household
television use.
Demonstration session. The live and video demonstration conditions were
equated as much as possible. For both groups, an experimenter demonstrated three
specific actions with two different sets of stimuli, one rattle and one animal. For each
condition, the number of demonstrations of the target actions is delineated as 3x or 6x to
refer to the fact that they were shown the target actions 3 or 6 times respectively in a
single session. The experimenter demonstrated the target actions for the first set of
stimuli and then she demonstrated the target actions for the second set of stimuli. The
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 11
target actions were always demonstrated in the order shown in Table 2. In order to later
accurately measure looking time during the demonstration, the toddlers face was
videotaped.
For the live 3xparent label condition the total demonstration time for each set of
stimuli was on average 40 s (M= 42.4 s, SD = 8.1). The variation in the live
demonstration times were due to differences in time to disassemble the stimuli and
occasional interruptions in the household such as a phone ringing. For toddlers in the live
3x parent label condition, the experimenter sat opposite the toddler and the caregiver on
the floor, such that the stimuli were out of the toddler's reach. The parent sat behind the
toddler.
Toddlers in the video 6x condition watched as a different experimenter performed
the same three specific actions with the sets of stimuli, however, each set of actions was
demonstrated six times on pre-recorded videotape and the total demonstration for each set
of stimuli was 60 to 63 s. The experimental setup for toddlers in the video condition was
identical to that used in prior studies of imitation from television (Barr & Hayne, 1999;
Barr, et al., 2007; Hayne et al., 2003). All toddlers were seated on the caregivers lap
during the demonstration approximately 80 cm from the familys most used television set
such that the screen was at the toddler's eye level but was out of reach. The participants'
home television screens ranged from 33 to 127 cm with an average screen size of 64.83
cm (SD = 15.4)and all were color. During the video demonstration, the experimenterremained in the room.
During the live and video demonstrations, the target actions were not verbally
described by the experimenter but to maintain the toddlers' attention on the test stimuli,
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 12
the experimenter used phrases like, "Isn't this fun?" or "One more time, speaking in a
manner characteristic of "motherese" in between demonstrations of the target actions.
The unique labels used by Herbert and Hayne (2000), meewa and thornby,
were also used in the present study for each set of stimuli. Caregivers in the live 3x
parent label and video 6x parent label conditions read a script using the unique labels,
and for the video 6x voice-overcondition the labels were prerecorded onto the
DVD/videotape with a female voice. The female who provided the voice-over did not
attend the visits. Caregivers in the video 6x parent no label condition read the same
script but the word something instead of the novel label. Each time the target actions
were demonstrated the following script was used. Just before the demonstration began,
Look, hes going to make a thornby. As the experimenter began putting the object
together, Whats he doing? Hes making a thornby. Just after he put the object
together, Look. Hes made a thornby. For the other set of stimuli the word meewa
was used. Parents complied with the instructions to read and on average said the word
Thornby or Meewa 8.2 times (SD = .95) during the live demonstration and 13.9
times (SD = 4.0) during the video demonstration. The stimuli, the order of the stimuli,
and the labels that were used with each set of stimuli were counterbalanced across
participants.
Test Session. Toddlers were tested after a 24-hour delay. Using a predetermined
script for each set of stimuli, the experimenters said, yesterday you saw how to make a
meewa (or thornby), you can use these things to make a meewa (thornby). The
experimenters asked the toddlers to make a meewa with one set of stimuli and a
thornby with the other. For the no label condition, the experimenter used the word
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 13
something for both sets of stimuli instead of saying meewa and thornby. Toddlers
were tested with the rattle or animal that they had not seen during the demonstration.
They were given 60 s per stimulus set to reproduce the target actions. To assess the
spontaneous production of the target actions in the absence of the demonstration of the
target actions, the baseline control condition was not shown the test stimuli prior to the
test. For the baseline control condition this was the first and only session.
Codingand reliability
Demonstration session. Looking time was coded from videotaped sessions using
a computer timer. The coder pressed a key to mark the beginning and end of the
demonstration and pressed another key when toddlers looked at or away from the
demonstration. The duration of the looks and overall percent looking were subsequently
calculated (e.g.,Anderson & Levin, 1976). Data were not recorded for 1 toddler due to
technical errors. Based on 52% of the sessions, a Pearson product-moment correlation on
percent looking time yielded an interobserver reliability coefficient of .92.
Test session. An observer noted the total number of target actions that each
toddler imitated for each rattle and animal stimulus set during the videotaped test session
(range 0-3 per task). Interobserver reliability was 94.5% (Kappa = .89) for the total
scores, based on 55% of the test sessions. When the two raters differed, the primary
raters score was assigned.
Results
Descriptive statistics. Language development in this sample was typical; on
average the percentile rank on the MCDI was 47.6 (SD = 32.9). We also coded the
number of words that toddlers knew to describe the tasks (carrot, banana, rabbit, monkey,
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 14
ball, rattle, stick), and parents reported that toddlers produced on average 3.9 of the 7
words (SD = 1.7) suggesting that the stimuli included items that toddlers were familiar
with. Based on reports by 87% of parents who completed a 24 hr household media diary,
television was used on average for 2 hrs and 7 min per day (SD = 1 hrs 42 mins) and
consistent with prior findings, toddlers were exposed to an average of 1 hr and 10 min per
day (SD = 1 hr 6 mins), 83% of which was child-directed programming.
Demonstration session. For the experimental conditions, looking time during the
demonstration, looking time during the target actions, frequency of points, frequency of
smiles, and frequency of vocalizations were coded. The data are shown in Table 3 as a
function of condition. A MANOVA was calculated on percent looking during target
actions, looks away, pointing, smiling, and vocalizations as a function of group
assignment. Behaviors were averaged across stimuli. The live condition data were
weighted by session duration. There was only one significant main effect, percent looking
during target actions, F(3,43) = 3.55, p < .03. Post-hoc Student Newman Kuhls tests
(SNK,p < .05) indicated that theparent label 6x video condition had significantly lower
looking time to the screen during the presentation of the target actions than the parent
label 3x live, parent no label 6x video, or the voice-over 6x video conditions that did not
differ from one another. The amount of vocalizing, pointing and smiling did not differ as
function of group assignment.
To assess whether looking patterns were related to imitation score, we conducted
a linear regression and entered the variable percent looking during target actions on
imitation score during the test. Percent looking during the demonstration did not predict
the number of target actions produced during the test, F(1,45) = < 1.
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 15
Test session: A preliminary analysis was conducted as a function of stimuli, order
of presentation, and gender. There were no main effects or interactions as a function of
order or gender. The data were therefore collapsed across these variables for further
analysis. There was a main effect of stimuli, F(3,55) = 3.43,p < .03. Post-hoc SNK tests
indicated that toddlers imitated significantly more actions using the rattle stimulus sets
than the animal stimulus sets but there was no difference as a function of type of rattle or
type of animal. Given that all infants were tested with both stimuli, the mean number of
target actions was averaged across the two stimuli. A one-way ANOVA yielded a
significant main effect of condition on the average number of behaviors reproduced
during the test session, F(4, 56) = 11.03,p < .001. The post-hoc analysis of this effect
addressed two main questions. First, did the experimental conditions perform above
baseline? Second, did the video conditions continue to show a video deficit relative to
the live demonstration condition? To answer these questions Dunnetts post-hoc t-tests
(p < .05) were used to compare each group to the baseline group. We also compared
each group to the live 3x parent label group. As shown in Figure 1, all of the
experimental groups performed significantly above baseline. Furthermore, the video 6x
no label group performed significantly worse than the live 3x parentgroup. The video 6x
parent label and the video 6x voice-over label groups did not differ from the live 3x
parentgroup. That is, repetition alone improves performance above baseline but does
not remove the video deficit. Doubling the number of repetitions on video and providing
verbal labels, either from the parent or voice-over, removes the video deficit effect.
Discussion
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 16
The findings replicate and extend those of Herbert and Hayne (2000) and Barr
and colleagues (2007). Extending Herbert and Hayne (2000), the present study examined
how imitation performance would be affected when demonstration was presented on
television rather than live. Extending Barr and colleagues, the present study examined
the effect of repetition on generalization performance. Previously, Hayne and Herbert
(2000) demonstrated that toddlers generalized when experimenters provided novel labels
during the demonstration but did not perform above baseline when no labels were
provided. Barr and colleagues (2007) found that repetition of the target actions removed
the video deficit when infants were tested with the same stimuli at test as had been
presented during the televised demonstration. Replicating Hayne and Herbert (2000), in
the present study when parents, rather than experimenters, provided verbal labels during
the live demonstration toddlers generalized to the new stimuli and imitated significantly
above baseline. The video no label group performed significantly above baseline but
their performance was significantly worse than that of the live parent label group. That
is, comparing across experiments it could be inferred that repetition increased group
performance above baseline but did not remove the video deficit. The present findings
suggest the repetition not only ameliorates the video deficit effect when the test stimuli
are the same as the demonstration but enhances learning when the test stimuli are novel.
When parents or a video voice-over provided the verbal label during the video
demonstration, toddlers generalized to the new stimuli and imitated significantly above
baseline and no longer exhibited a video deficit. Toddlers were able to use novel verbal
labels provided by their parents or a voice-over to solve a difficult imitation problem
from television. Taken together, the present study suggests that both repetition of
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 17
information and provision of unique verbal labels led to increased generalization
performance following a video demonstration.
Both parent labeling and voice-over were effective in enhancing imitation of the
target actions on a novel stimulus but behavior during the demonstration differed across
experimental conditions. When parents provided verbal labels during the video
demonstration, looking time was significantly lower than for other experimental groups.
The video parent label condition involved a complex joint visual attention situation when
new language information was provided by the parent and new visual information was
provided on the screen, much like a typical book reading situation. Even though looking
time decreased, imitation performance did not, demonstrating that toddlers were able to
integrate the labels provided by parents with the 2D information presented on the screen.
In contrast, looking time remained high for the video no label group when no new
language was provided by parents. Given that looking time is sometimes a reflection of
endogenous attention and encoding of information (Kannass & Colombo, 2007) one
possible interpretation of the data is that the parent-label group actually facilitated
learning relative to the voice-over condition.
Analogous to the book reading situation where parents act as a scaffold to
promote literacy, parents can enhance learning from television as well. Social
contingency has been found to increase toddlers learning from television (e.g., Troseth,
Saylor, & Archer, 2006). Troseth and colleagues assigned 2 year olds to a contingent or
non-contingent close-circuit interaction. Toddlers in a contingent condition interacted
with an experimenter across a close-circuit television screen for 5 minutes. At the end of
the interaction, the experimenter told children where they could find the hidden toy in the
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 18
room next door and asked them to go and find it. Toddlers in the non-contingent control
group watched pre-taped social interactions that were not contingent upon their behavior.
The 2-year-olds who received contingent feedback were significantly more likely to find
the hidden toy than were the toddlers who had seen a pre-taped non-contingent
interaction. Troseth et al. (2006) concluded that that during the second year of life,
toddlers increasingly expect to obtain relevant information from a contingent social
partner. Lack of contingency during the televised demonstration disrupts the transfer of
information from television to real-life activities. The present study extends the findings
of Troseth and her colleagues to suggest that learning can be scaffolded via parental
mediation or via voice-over presentations. It is somewhat surprising that the voice-over
condition produced similar results given that there was no social contingency. It is
possible that fast mapping of the novel labels by toddlers when target actions were clearly
displayed allowed such generalization to occur (see also Krcmar et al., 2007).
These findings have implications for future programming aimed at toddlers of this
age. Repetition, increased parental involvement, and voice-overs may influence the
success of toddlers retention of information from television and facilitate their
vocabulary development. Voice-over may be particularly effective beginning around 2
years of age. It is less likely that providing verbal labels via voice-over would be as
effective for children under 2 given Herbert and Haynes (2000) original negative
findings with unique labels during a live demonstration. Krcmar and colleagues (2007)
also found that infants 22 months and older were able to learn words from a voice-over
videoclip but those under 22 months were not. Additional research is required to
investigate all three techniques at different ages to assess when these strategies would be
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 19
most effective. Furthermore, it would be important to assess whether adding letters and
numbers act as a distracter for toddlers in this age range. Krcmar and colleagues (2007)
found that presentation of simple adult word naming was easier to learn than word
learning embedded in a more complex video display. These authors suggested that it
may be difficult for infants to know where to focus their attention on the screen.
Furthermore, symbol learning in general is highly complex and deficits are often seen
until the third year of life (e.g. Troseth & Deloache, 1998).
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 20
Acknowledgements
We would like to extend our thanks to the families that have participated in our study.
Thanks to Beverly Good, Ann-Marie Faria, Kara Garrity, and Katherine Salerno for their
help in the data collection and coding. The research was funded by an NICHD grant to
Rachel Barr (# HD043047-01) and by NSF grant to Childrens Digital Media Center (#
NSF 0126014) and the Georgetown University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 21
Figure captions
Figure 1. The mean imitation score as a function of experimental group. The baseline
control group performance is indicated by a dashed line. Group performance that was
significantly above baseline is indicated by an asterisk. A difference in performance
between the video 6x parent no label group and live 3x parent label group is indicated by
a line above and connecting the two groups.
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Toddlers use verbal cues to imitate from television 22
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Table 1. The presentation mode, number of demonstrations, provision of label and label
provider as a function of experimental condition.
Condition Presentation
mode
Number of
demonstrations
Label
provided
Who provided
label?
Live 3x parent label Live 3 Yes Parent
Video 6x parent label Video 6 Yes Parent
Video 6x parent no label Video 6 No Parent
Video 6x voice over Video 6 Yes Voice over
Baseline - - - -
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Table 2. The Three Target Actions Each Set Of Stimuli.
Stimulus set Step 1 Step 2 Step 3
Green Rattle Push block through
diaphragm into jar
Put stick on jar attaching
with Velcro
Shake stick to make noise
Red Rattle Put the bead in the jar Push the stick into the top
of the jar
Shake stick to make noise
Rabbit Pull lever in a circular
motion to raise ears
Place eyes on face
attaching with Velcro
Put the carrot in the
rabbits mouth
Monkey Pull lever in a circular
motion to raise ears
Place eyes on face
attaching with velcro
Put the banana in the
monkeys mouth
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Table 3. Behavior ( SE) during the demonstration session as a function of group
assignment.
Parent 3x live label Parent 6x video Voiceover 6x
label no label
% Looking 95 (2) 88 (2)* 95 (2) 97 (1)
Looks away .75 (.23) 2.54 (.56) 1.14 (.45) .79 (.30)
Points .30 (.12) .08 (.08) .14 (.07) .25 (.18)
Vocalizations .74 (.20) 1.70 (.53) 2.39 (.64) .25 (.18)
Smiles .75 (.19) .95 (.29) .70 (.29) .37 (.11)
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0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
Live 3x Video 6x
VO
Video 6x
parent
Video 6x
parent no
label
Experimental Condition
ImitationScore
baseline
** *
*
*
*
Figure 1